"Why, old Joe Crowfoot!" answered Brad. "The only Indian I ever saw of his kind."
Immediately Wiley approached old Joe, walking teeteringly on the balls of his feet, after his own peculiar fashion, made a salute, and exclaimed:
"I salute you, Joseph Crowfoot, Esquire, and may your shadow never grow less. May you take your medicine regularly and live to the ripe round age of one hundred years. Perhaps you don't know me. Perhaps you haven't heard of me. That is your misfortune. I am Cap'n Wiley, a rover of the briny deep and a corking first-class baseball player. Ever play baseball, Joe, old boy? It's a great game. You would enjoy it. In my mind's eye I see you swing the bat like a war club and swat the sphere hard enough to dent it. Or perchance you are attempting to overhaul the base runner, and I see him fleeing wildly before you, as if he fancied you were reaching for his scalp locks."
"Ugh!" grunted old Joe. "No know who um be; but know heap good name for um. Joe he give you name. He call you Wind-in-the-head."
At this the others, with the exception of Wiley himself, laughed outright. The sailor, however, did not seem at all pleased.
"It's plain, Joseph," he observed, "that you have a reckless little habit of getting gay occasionally. Take my advice and check that habit before it leads you up against a colossal calamity."
"Wind-in-the-head he talk heap many big words," said the Indian. "Mebbe sometime he talk big words that choke him."
"And that certainly is the worst pun it has ever been my misfortune to hear," half sobbed the sailor. "One more like that would give me heart failure. Did you ever hear of the time I had heart failure in that baseball game with the Cleveland Nationals? Well, mates, it was----"
"We can't stand one of them before breakfast, Wiley," interrupted Dick. "It may prove too much for us. After breakfast we will endeavor to listen while you relate one of your harrowing experiences."
"But this thing is burning in my bosom. I long to disgorge it."
"You have to let it burn, I think. We should be on the move by this time."
Thus Wiley was repressed and prevented from relating one of his marvelous yarns, not a little to his disgust.
It was past midday. Guided by Wiley, who seemed to know the way well, the party had pushed on into the mountains and followed a course that led them over ragged slopes and steep declivities.